About demand avoidance

We all experience demands in daily life and avoid things we don’t want to do. But for autistic people with a PDA profile, when demand avoidance is triggered, it can become impossible for someone to take action. This experience is often described by PDAers as a feeling of “can’t, not won’t”.

Demands can cause extreme anxiety to the point of panic, which might result in one of the following responses:

• fight – becoming argumentative, oppositional, or physically resistant.
• flight – leaving the room, avoiding contact, running away.
• freeze – staring, zoning out, or becoming non-verbal.
• fawn – appeasing others, saying what they want to hear, being overly agreeable.

Demands can include internalised expectations (e.g. “I should brush my teeth”), social norms (e.g. replying to a message), or physical needs (e.g. eating or sleeping). Some things that don’t seem like demands on the surface can still be experienced that way, such as dress codes, fixed timetables, or menus with limited options. Anything that restricts someone’s freedom or sense of control can become a demand.

Here’s some examples of how demands can come up in daily life:

• requests – “Have you packed your bag yet?”.
• expectations – “She’s looking to see if I’ve packed my bag”.
• thoughts – “I should pack my bag”. 
• desires – “I really want to pack my bag”.
• praise – “You packed your bag brilliantly yesterday”.

The amount someone can manage can change depending on their capacity, and even enjoyable or routine activities can become impossible when they have pressure attached to them.

This means that PDA demand avoidance can seem illogical on the surface and can sometimes be misinterpreted as someone being defiant or intentionally difficult. In reality, many PDAers struggle to do things they want and need to do, and this misunderstanding makes it harder to get support.